


Time May Give You More Than Your Poor Bones Could Ever Take

by theshipsfirstmate



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, season 4 spec, souffle spoilers, what if felicity knows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 14:12:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5130587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More season 4 spec. #soufflespoilers.</p>
<p>What if Felicity knows?</p>
<p>Featuring equal parts Moira Queen and Alanis Morrisette.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time May Give You More Than Your Poor Bones Could Ever Take

_Title from “[Belated Promise Ring](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVwIBFEjQXY)” by Iron and Wine._

**Time May Give You More Than Your Poor Bones Could Ever Take**

Felicity Smoak has always had a tenuous relationship with irony. She remembers, as a kid, asking her mother what the word meant when that Alanis Morrissette song was all over the place.

Donna’s boyfriend at the time, a bouncer at a strip club near the Bellagio, had interrupted, “It’s how rich people say ‘bullshit,’” cracking himself up. Felicity remembers storming off to consult her dog-eared dictionary.

It’s not a term she likes, as a problem-solving left brain. Effects have causes, questions have answers. Irony pays those rules no heed. Besides, the word is over-assigned and misused by people who don’t really know what they’re saying. Including, and especially, Alanis.

So, maybe the situation Felicity finds herself now in isn’t ironic, at it’s core. Maybe, like traffic, or needing a knife, or meeting a dreamy-but-already-married man, it’s just kind of unfortunate.

_“We all have to keep secrets, Ms. Smoak.”_

She realizes now that both women in that room at the Queen mansion years ago, had understood on some level how much she loved Oliver, even then. It speaks volumes that the worst thing that Moira Queen – a woman Shakespeare himself would have told to _cool it_ – had to throw at her was the threat that Oliver might hate her forever.

The blow had landed at the time, she remembers regretfully. But she’s never regretted telling him the truth. Some part of her had known all along how wrong Moira was about her son.

So now, she’s left struggling to find a word to describes how it feels to keep a secret this massive from Oliver, something she never wanted to do again. For that secret to be his mother’s ring is, if not ironic, at the very least, kind of unfortunate.

* * *

The first time she had suspected something was one morning in Ivy Town, when he wouldn’t let her out of bed. Usually they were up and going by eight on weekdays, she logged in to Palmer Tech from the home office, while he ran or worked out and made them breakfast. On this particular morning, however, it was closing in on ten and he still had her pinned beneath him, lips trailing up her neck, which was already scraped red from his stubble. So much for video conferencing.

“Oliver,” she had moaned a half-hearted protest, knowing he wasn’t going anywhere, knowing she didn’t really want him to.

“Mmm, you said you could be late today.” He had punctuated his point by taking her lower lip between his teeth and when she gasped, she heard it echo in his mouth before his lip closed over hers again.

“I know, but….”

There was no real protest to make, she was just confused. It wasn’t like a little morning hanky-panky was totally out of character for them, but usually he liked to run first, to get his day started before coming back to distract her from her work. Plus, he knew how she liked him sweaty, and never missed a chance to use that knowledge to his advantage.

But not this morning. This morning, he was doing his best to get them sweaty without even leaving the bed. He’d had her over the edge once already, even still half-dressed, and was in the process of working her up again, fingers finally skimming underneath the edge of her panties, when suddenly, he was gone completely, her body chilling immediately when she lost contact with his skin. In her lust-addled haze, it had taken a moment for her to register that the doorbell had rung, but Oliver was on his feet and adjusting his briefs and sweatpants before her eyes could even fully blink open.

She heard him dart to the front door, swinging it open and having a brief, muffled conversation, but a split second later he was back, shedding his sweats and practically pouncing back onto her, picking up where he had left off.

“Oliver, what…” she dodged his lips in curiosity, but he had just shrugged it off.

“Thea sent some uh, kitchen stuff from the old place.” It’s a terrible lie, but she couldn’t work her way through it when his tongue traced around her industrial piercing before his teeth nipped their way down her neck. “I had to sign for the package.”

It was a full hour later when she finally sat down at her computer, hair still damp from round four up against the shower wall. Her adorable Adonis was banging away in the kitchen again, as frustrating it was that he’s the one who’s picked up the domestic life so seamlessly, it had warmed her heart every time his eyes lit up over something silly like mastering a julienne or getting a good deal on produce.

She gave it a good few hours before curiosity got the best of her, and after a few perfunctory searches – nothing she couldn’t mentally justify to herself – she found that Thea Queen had indeed been at the newly rebuilt Star City Post Office the day before, right after paying a visit to Starling National and accessing one of her mother’s safety deposit boxes.

She remembers how her heart had lept straight up into her throat, even as rationale tried to prevail in her mind. It could be anything. It could be a coincidence, it could be something else entirely, she said, over and over, hopefully not out loud. It could be anything, her mind had protested, trying to drown out the way her heart was screaming that it could be _everything_.

A few days later, after brunch with the less-than-subtle Hoffmans, she was amazed at how many chances to blow it she had successfully avoided. His jittery knee had nearly knocked their dinner from the table more than once, he was tripping on his words, even more so than when he had asked her out for ill-fated Italian more than a year ago, and then there were the _souffles_.

When Thea and Laurel showed up, she told herself the relief was just so she had something to focus on aside from spoiling the secret, but she still had to look away when the disappointment flashed across his face. She remembers being surprised at how forcefully her stomach had somersaulted when he had slunk back to the kitchen and she thinks her heart may have cracked permanently when she heard the sink running.

* * *

And now, weeks later, she just _knows_. She knows, and every interaction she has with him, conscious or not, is colored by her knowing. What’s worse is, she’s ready now. Her anticipation in Ivy Town had been something closer to dread, but it’s like a switch has flipped since they’ve returned to the city and their old double lives.

She’s ready to have him and hold him, for better or worse, mostly because she already does. But just as some part of her is suddenly restless to make it official, he’s shown no signs of a second effort, and she worries that he’s pulling back, second guessing things. They’ve seemingly swapped sides without meeting in the middle. She wonders if Alanis might have anything to say about that.

She hadn’t actually see the ring itself until they returned to the city. She finally spotted it one day, late for work and tearing the loft apart looking for a thumb drive, cursing the technology that made digital storage small enough to lose sight of. It’s just sitting there, in the bowl of glass beads on the coffee table, out in the open, like some kind of test.

She’s only tried it on twice, which still sounds sort of sane in her head, but is something she’s been very careful not to say out loud. It’s beautiful, and the way it looks on her hand gives her a feeling she never thought she’d have, or even really want. Something about it should probably feel wrong, wearing the ring that once resided on a finger of a woman who probably wouldn’t like her any better now than she did when she was swearing her to soap opera levels of secrecy. But it’s starting to feel like the only thing that’s wrong is that Oliver hasn’t asked her yet.

It’s easy to use the excitement over the new lair to deflect when Thea nearly blows it, but she still nearly chokes on her own spit when his sister points to her ring finger, deflecting as fast as Thea does when she realizes her slip.

Felicity gets a headrush in the elevator on the way down, partly from adrenaline, and partly from Thea’s excitement and the tacit approval she hasn’t really let herself hope for. Family stuff, especially where the Queens are concerned, can be tricky, and that’s before anyone was dealing with any kind of Lazarus Pit-induced bloodlust. To see his sister so excited for them in any capacity knocks her sideways in a way she wasn’t totally ready to deal with. 

When Laurel asks later, she’s still a little shaky and it’s harder to deflect, so she keeps her eyes on the screen and her mind on the mission. “No idea.”

* * *

“Moira told me once how she liked who Oliver was when we were together,” Laurel had told her one night, when they thought Oliver was gone for good.

She remembers how they used to take seemingly unspoken turns during that time, the team that was left, making sure Felicity was never by herself in the Foundry. Roy would hustle her along, try to get her to go out for food or drinks, and John was always happy to sit in a companionable silence, waiting until she finished her work. Sometimes though, she and Laurel would get to talking. One of them would offer up an anecdote, Laurel would tell Felicity about what Oliver was like in junior high or Felicity would detail the one and only time she met Tommy Merlyn in person. They’d go back and forth, sharing soft stories with sad smiles, until the night caught up to them and they went home.

“It took me so long to realize that even that was a kind of manipulation,” her friend had continued one night. “She was always pulling the strings. It wasn’t that she liked who he was then. She liked that he was easy then, pliable to her demands, oblivious to the things she didn’t want him to see.”

Felicity had told her then, opened up about how the woman had threatened her for the first time since she broke the news to Oliver all those years ago.

“I’m sure she saw it,” Laurel had smiled knowingly. “You probably scared the crap out of her.”

* * *

She’s ready to wait for him now, Felicity realizes on that memory, just like she had been ready to lose him then. She’ll be whatever he needs, for as long as they’ve got and someday, when they’re ready, they’ll assign a new lifetime of memories to his mother’s ring and give him the happy ending he deserves.

And if there’s rain on her wedding day, it won’t be ironic. She knows neither of them will care.


End file.
